Genre is currently a contentious Key Concept. Traditionally Media Theorists have studied the way different Media texts fall into different categories (or Genres) such as Horror, Soap Opera or Broadsheet Newspaper.
However as media producers blur the boundaries between different genre the study of the concept itself becomes more problematic.
At an introductory level it is still useful to look at the Generic Conventions of a text to see how it fits into the media world.